The Church Times (January 25^th) has published an interview between its reporter Hattie Williams and Meg Munn, the new chair of the National Safeguarding Panel (NSP).  This Panel is part of the byzantine complexity of safeguarding structures in the Church of England which I tried to interpret in an earlier post.  Hitherto, to use an analogy, the Church’s safeguarding industry appears to be like a cluster of small sailing ships all going in the same direction but with their riggings hopelessly entangled together.  Now with the ship being captained by Meg Munn, the NSP, we can at last begin to see clear water between the ships.  In a word, Meg Munn has declared her determination to strike out to provide a clear independent voice on behalf of good practice and the needs of survivors.

Two areas of interest which are particularly striking, and which are discussed in the interview, are summed up in the words, independence and depth.  The first of these words sums up the importance of striking out from existing vested interests and taking a new stance.   Those of us who listened to the IICSA hearings on the Diocese of Chichester must have been struck by the cosy collusion among those in authority that went on over decades.  The system seemed to protect its own because everyone with any information was caught up somewhere in a spider’s web of loyalty, deference and vested interest.  There was no one outside that network that could speak truth to power.  Meg is unsure whether the system of historical enmeshment needs an independent national body to oversee it, or whether the existing structures, diocesan and national, can be made to work.  The fact that the question is being properly asked is indeed a sign of hope for the future.

Another sign of real hope is that the NSP is to meet six times a year.  This will concentrate minds and memories as bi-monthly meetings are less likely to let decisions go cold and ideas slip away from attention.  The body will certainly have greater influence if its discussions are constantly placed on the agenda of the national church.  The House of Bishops and General Synod are far less likely to ignore the safeguarding agenda if the Panel is constantly coming up with new ideas and proposals for their consideration.

The second of the two words I mentioned is the word depth.  Hitherto, this blog has noted that the National Safeguarding Team (NST) based at Church House has had no specialist in therapeutic matters working with it.  This has sent a clear message that safeguarding is all about management, structures and good practice for those working to prevent future abuse incidents.  The concerns of survivors seemed to be, if not ignored, certainly placed low on the agenda.  I expressed the opinion that the Church should set up a completely independent body with the sole task of caring for survivors.  Given the fact that the team working for the NST must be costing in excess of a million a year, it seemed reasonable for the church to pay for a small team to coordinate therapeutic care for survivors.  Meg’s passion to understand the impact of abuse ‘from the inside’ is very welcome.  The interview revealed a personal link to experiences of abuse in that she has two family members, each abused ‘horrifically’ by a Catholic priest in Australia.  It is hard to see how the Panel will ever be allowed to stray from an awareness of that experience to focus merely on structural matters and management of systems.

To summarise, the interview with Meg Munn gives us the sense that the future of safeguarding and the care of abuse survivors is a brighter one than in the past.  The option, which many of us favour, for an independent body to oversee the church’s work in this area, is under consideration.   Even if this proposal does not come to pass, we all have a sense that survivors have a real champion in Meg.  In a blog or two back, I wrote about the importance of creating a bridge which needed to be crossed between the world of efficient safeguarding and the world of caring effectively for survivors.  All too easily in the world of safeguarding, the ‘experts’ live on one side of the river or the other.  Few of them, because of professional background or intellectual training, want to span this particular gap.  In Meg Munn we seem to have someone who is willing and able to cross over this bridge so that the Church can be taught to fulfil its vocation both to protect the weak and to minister and care for those who have suffered in the past.